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Challenging the perceptions
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How does the India connection impact his music? MADHAV CHARI, in the first of a monthly column, reflects on what it means to be an Indian and a jazz pianist in New York.
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"Your jazz piano playing is not Indian enough. You sound too much like a New York pianist."
THIS was a new one! Criticism of my piano work often ranged from the technical ("You have to spell out the chord changes in your improvisation") and aesthetic aspects ("Can you communicate to me with a slow blues?") to the Zen-like simplicity of Kenny Barron: "Check out (pianist) Wynton Kelley".
In 1996, I had moved to the east coast of the United States to be close to New York City to take up a fulltime career in jazz music (a seemingly improbable event given my highly socialised background growing up in Kolkata, but not so far fetched if one looked closely at my own "eccentricities" that included cutting classes in school to listen to jazz records at a teacher's house on the campus). I had, of course, learnt rapidly that in this hypercompetitive music world, one had to indulge in some amount of shameless self-promotion, so I diligently mailed out tapes to record companies.
One of my targets was a small German record label run on the lines of a "boutique" label: small print runs, no reprints, very "artsy" (not one of the major jazz labels like Verve Polygram: I was targeting the smaller labels hoping to attract more attention). Some of the CDs released had decent music, and some of it was questionable (including the work of a strange specimen of musician called a "jazz tabla player": many serious jazz listeners in New York would dismiss this novel concept as elevator music; most serious Hindustani music listeners would hear a percussionist who had no technique and, therefore, was irrelevant).
Rather than the usual dismissal from the label, such as "We cannot accommodate all the artists we really want due to budgetary constraints", I was given a long diatribe that I was not a serious artist because I had not yet brought my Indian experience into my jazz playing (levelled at me by an Indian woman from Kolkata who worked for this German record label). She said that she could not hear the Kolkata in my playing, and maybe I should record raag Malkauns on the piano with a sarod player (technical note: mainstream jazz has a well defined tradition, performance practice, vocabulary, stylistic guidelines: to my knowledge there are no easy formulas to incorporate Indian vocabulary into jazz).
I did not know that my being a member of the New York gharana of hard bop/modern jazz piano playing would turn out to be a problem for some record labels (that simply associated Indian faces to music that sounded "Indian"). There is a trend now to make the India connection a little too obvious: many artists and artist promoters/industry have bought this idea, so it is fashionable to deliberately wear the Indianness. The Indian bit becomes yet another gimmick in the work of art to "make it" in the global marketplace. I have encountered many musicians (even "jazz musicians" of Indian descent and non-Indian musicians) whose skill level was questionable, but they seemed to get attention (from other artists of Indian descent, promoters and media) because there was some Indian theme that was referenced in their work. Part of the new trend is to provide an acceptable level of Indianness for the west (and the new global Indian elite) (for example in certain music circles Carnatic music is considered too hardcore, but easy listening music with the easily understandable India references that hybridises a little of the west and the east is cool: some of these examples of ear candy are being passed off as intelligent works of art).
In the end, overall artistic quality is being sacrificed for the obvious India reference, and mediocrity is fast becoming the norm. Moreover, a certain kind of pigeonholing takes place and artists of Indian background may not be able, or willing to use the wealth of their diverse influences in their work (which may not be easily categorised: after all, the Indian related experience is insanely huge, and defies any kind of labelling): in short, artists are put into a box, and it is difficult to come out of the box.
It can be extremely interesting to use musical influences from India in an organic way: it depends on how one thinks artistically. I play the piano, so it is natural for me to think "harmonically" a lot of the time (one can hear harmonies instantly on a piano; also mainstream jazz is extremely harmony driven). It is not that natural for me to think about melodies on my instrument without thinking of harmony (for jazz and classical players, the melodic aspect of the music is not separate from the harmony). Technically, I cannot bend notes on a piano so I cannot play ragas. For guitar players, it is easy to bend notes, so it is possible to have ragas as a natural part of one's thinking (based on the training). However, for an expert flamenco or blues guitar player, the thinking would be very different from a Hindustani or Carnatic guitar/mandolin player since a different knowledge system was internalised. Even if the knowledge systems are different, musical bridges can be built by musicians who have different ways of thinking, provided they find ways to communicate to each other — the key issue is that the work of art is inspired.
In the context of my own work (as a jazz musician-composer that is informed by a well defined jazz tradition) I find that influences from America, Europe, west and central Africa, Argentina, Cuba and Brazil play a key role. I do not feel any less Indian in my being because I deal with material that is geographically "non-Indian", nor do I feel an urgency to deliberately distort mainstream jazz to an Indianised version because it is "black American" or "American" music. Of course, the Indian influences can find their way into my work, but I am not circumscribing limits. They have already affected the way I developed a mastery of the elements of jazz music, though they have not shown themselves in the "form" of the music.
There are many musicians whose primary goal is great musicianship, and are constantly challenging ethnic stereotypes: a driving Russian drummer playing samba with Brazilians, a white American trombone player playing salsa with Cubans and Puerto Ricans, a black American trumpet virtuoso playing a concerto with one of the premier symphony orchestras, and yes, an Indian pianist swinging hard, playing modern mainstream jazz with black Americans. Surely, in this age where everything needs to be labelled, the search for artistic excellence is still a worthwhile goal.
The writer is an International jazz pianist.
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